The plan

[Teria]

Never satisfied with what I have, I'm now planning on making a cage on legs so I can store my pigs' unused houses, transport boxes, hay, bedding and so on under it. I bought five long grids which will hopefully be delivered within the next hour, and since I'm excited and have no thought for anything else, least of all working, I made a little construction drawing in CorelDraw. The blue grids are those I'll get, the black ones are those I already have (they're all white, I coloured them just for the distinction). The grey areas will have to be closed with my additional freerun grids. If it all works out, the "legs" will get little wheels so I can move the whole thing. The entire size will be 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 grids. What do you think?

 

[Piglet]

Gosh, don't know what to be more impressed at - the design or the drawing in corel!!!
That sounds fantastic. So what will be the total measurement of the cage? Where are you getting those long grids from? They sound really cool.

 

[Teria]

It'll be 1,80 m x 1,40 m - don't know how much it is in inches, sorry. I ordered the long grids online at "Kuhn Ladenbau", they are store decoration grids and you can buy them only five grids at a time. One grid costs 10,35 €, five cost 51,75 € but the transport and the connectors were expensive, so it cost me some 100 € to get them. (broken link removed) is where I found them.

 

[Slap Maxwell]

It looks really neat, I really like it. The only problem that I see is that the legs won't provide enough support.

 

[Piglet]

Hmm...that website looks so familiar. I swear I've seen a picture of those long grids on an english website. I really like them

Slap, that's a really good point. I don't think that the cage would stay upright, it could topple over

 

[Teria]

Really? I thought the six grids I used as legs would be enough, since they'd tend to fall into different directions and thus hinder each other from toppling over at all. Of course I want the cage to be as steady (right word?) as possible.

 

[Teria]

The grids are here now and you may be right, Slap - they are much heavier than I expected. So it's now back to CorelDraw to redesign.

 

[Teria]

Hm. Can anyone tell me how many supporting grids my cage will need?

 

[stipma]

I'm not sure of the exact number of grids, but it looks like you will need some grids supporting the middle of the cage rather than just on the outside. Let me reword that. I mean the grids that you are using for the stand. If you just have them along the outside, I can see the middle collapsing. Does that make sense?

 

[LuvMyPiggers]

You could make something that has the whole cage except 1 2 or 3 grids taken and a small square in the middle.

 

[carrotflavour]

you need more support in the middle...put some legs there.

 

[Teria]

Ok, I'll do that. So far, I have no idea how much weight the cubes can carry. Would they bend, break or simply topple over? The cage will stand in a corner as a support but I really don't like the idea of anything bending or breaking so my pigs, their houses and the entire layer of bedding come sliding in an avalanche.

 

[Slap Maxwell]

If you use connectors, it will fall apart. If you use cable ties, it will just sag tremendously.

 

[Teria]

How encouraging. *G* Ok, here's my newest idea. As you can see, this leaves me with quite a lot of grey areas which I have to cover with freerange grids. I REALLY wish I'd find more cubes here but it's hopeless.